Directed
by Ridley Scott. Screenplay by Hampton
Fancher and David Peoples (based on
the story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip
K. Dick). 1982. Running time: 118 Minutes.

As a
15-year old watching Blade
Runner when it
came out back in 1982, I knew somehow that this movie was
important. It wasn't until the 1990s that anybody knew how
important it was. Not merely was it the most influential science
fiction movie made in the 1980s, but probably the best as well .
. .

That's
right. Forget all the so-called "sci-fi" blockbusters
that saw the light of cinema screens in the 'Eighties. Forget Total
Recall, E.T. and Return of
the Jedi. The best
pure science fiction movie made in the previous decade was one
that was initially reviled by the critics and ignored by
moviegoers. One of the few people who realised its greatness back
then was cyberpunk sci-fi writer William Gibson who admitted in
interviews to being depressed after seeing the movie. He has been
pre-empted: Blade Runner was cyberpunk - two years before
Gibson exploded unto the scene with his Neuromancer novel
and the term became an overused buzzword.

Blade
Runner perfectly captured the mental landscape of the
cyberpunk literary genre, just as it perfectly captured the
feeling of how it must be like to live in the Los Angeles of
director Ridley Scott's 2017. Cyberpunk is after all interested
in the man-machine dichotomy. Therefor it is only obvious that a
film with the thematic concerns of Blade Runner (what is
human? what isn't?) should be crowned as its chief celluloid
icon. And it's just as obvious that Philip K. Dick (the author on
whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the film
is based) should be designated the movement's unofficial
Godfather.

While
the film merely borrows a few ideas and a few character names
from Dick's novel and descends into a typical "bounty hunter
in pursuit of his prey" Hollywood plotline, this is beside
the point. The point is Blade Runner's look and feel, one
that has been oft imitated by a host of films that followed it
but never equalled. Later the Blade Runner look became the
cliched dystopia of the near future in 1980s/1990s sci-fi such as The Fifth
Element, Lawnmower
Man II, Barb Wire and Johnny
Mnemonics. As one
commentator remarked: at first Blade Runner seemed like an
unlikely fantasy, then it seemed like a dire prophecy, then it
seemed like a documentary on something that already existed and
in the end it seemed like an advertisement for something.

For
once sci-fi seemed to predict the future correctly. Like 2001: A
Space Odyssey, Blade
Runner offered us a vision of a future that seemed
astoundingly real. (That the two futures depicted in the films
are so disparate is an article of its won, each movie reflecting
the hopes and fears of the time in which it was made). While it
is unlikely that Los Angeles will ever resemble the city of
Scott's imagination (instead it seems to be a cross between Osaka
in Japan and Chicago on a very bad day) , this too doesn't
matter. Blade Runner's Los Angeles has its feet planted in
reality - it might as well have been the nightmare of any urban
planner

But
sci-fi as prophecy seldomly works (and isn't really the point of
the genre). It is cyberpunk's own adeptness as coining phrases
(for example the word "cyberspace" which is basically
where you're reading this article now) that soon delegated it to
a mere historical curiosity and (even worse) cliched. However,
while the memory of the film has been tarnished by many rip-offs,
Blade Runner itself remains as brilliant as it was back in
1982.

Blade
Runner is one of those few films that actually got better.
In 1992, the original version of the film (before Hollywood execs
got their grubby little paws on it) was released theatrically as
a director's cut. It featured the most comprehensive changes made
to a film by such a so-called "director's cut." Whereas
much hype surrounded the Star Wars
Special Edition we saw
earlier this year, the director's cut of Blade Runner
offered audiences more than a few cosmetic changes such as
cleaned up special effects and sound, a CGI creature or two. Blade
Runner - Director's Cut altered the film's tone and feeling
and ultimately its plot as well. Gone was the tag-on happy
ending, along with Harrison Ford's voice over. In came a haunting
dream sequence featuring a unicorn. This particular version of Blade
Runner will go down in cinema history as the
definitive version. (Unlike the Star Wars Special Edition
which in retrospect seems an odd hybrid of 1970s and 1990s
technology all in one movie.)

In
many ways Blade Runner is an average movie. Its
cinematography is typically 1980s. Scott, like many other
directors (his brother Tony Scott and Alan Parker comes to mind)
started in the advertising business. Blade Runner has what
they call The Look, and The Look looks like a
television ad. Yet it is the way that Ridley Scott throws
together his many visual elements that make Blade Runner
such a unique experience. This is a trick he managed with his
Alien movie as well. Scott's visuals are like those of a covert
surrealist: he seamlessly blends the familiar with the alien. His
human figures are framed by strange and alien landscapes. When he
filmed his Black Rain police thriller with Michael Douglas
in Osaka in Japan a few years later, cyberpunk has already become
true. Unlike many Hollywood movies, the reissued cut of Blade
Runner has a crushing streak of nihlism running through it.
It is understandable that Hollywood, always intent on selling
tickets, were distressed at seeing this original cut. There is no
happy ending, Harrison Ford isn't cracking one-liners (like he
did as Indiana Jones and in the Star Wars movies).
Come to think of it: there are no happy characters! But you
wouldn't be happy either living in Scott's Los Angeles. So
instead of selling tickets Hollywood made a good movie for once .
. .